I'll begin this with an editorial comment: JUST SAY NO to pressure from the People's Republic to censor. But businesses care more about the profit potential in China, so will bow to the regime's whims in return for market share. Sad, pathetic, and pitiful. Now Apple has jumped into the game, blocking apps related to that subversive of all subversives, the Dalai Lama. More:

"Apple appears to have blocked iPhone applications related to the Dalai Lama in its China App Store, making it the latest U.S. technology company to censor its services in China.

Those apps, which appear in most countries' versions of the App Store, do not currently appear in the Chinese version. Another app related to Rebiya Kadeer, who like the Dalai Lama is an exiled minority leader reviled by China's authorities, is unavailable in the China App Store as well. The apparent censorship comes after carrier China Unicom launched iPhone sales two months ago, making regulatory approval of the phone's contents in the country necessary for the first time.

'We continue to comply with local laws,' Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller said in an e-mail when asked about the missing apps. 'Not all apps are available in every country.'

At least five iPhone apps related to the Dalai Lama are unavailable in the China store. Some of those apps -- named Dalai Quotes, Dalai Lama Quotes and Dalai Lama Prayerwheel -- display inspirational quotes from the Tibetan spiritual leader. Another, Paging Dalai Lama, tells users where he is currently teaching. A fifth app, Nobel Laureates, contains information about Nobel Prize winners including the Dalai Lama."

When you represent the global information superhighway, is it really compatible with your values to participate in the repression of free speech?

(Photo by Hannah Johnston/Getty Images)

The opposition protests in Iran have been revived by the Shiite Tasoua and Ashura festival, resulting in the first protest deaths since the post-election protests in June. And one of the dead, according to Iranian opposition news sources, is the nephew of the opposition leader who took on the mullahocracy in those elections. More from Reuters:

"Four people died in Tehran on Sunday when pro-reform protesters clashed with security forces, Iranian state TV said, in the worst outbreak of violence since June's contested election sparked political turmoil.

Opposition websites said eight people were killed when tens of thousands demonstrated across Iran during a Shi'ite Muslim religious festival.

Among the dead was opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi's nephew. State TV said 'unknown assailants' killed Ali Habibi Mousevi. A Mousavi aide described the death as a 'martyrdom'.

Opposition website Jaras said police shot and killed four protesters in central Tehran. State TV dismissed foreign media reports that security forces had killed protesters. It said police had fired into the air to disperse demonstrators.

Over 300 protesters were arrested in Tehran, state TV said.

'Dozens of police officers have been injured including Tehran's police chief,' the TV quoted Ahmadreza Radan, Iran's deputy police chief, as saying. He said one person fell from a bridge, two died in car accidents and one was shot dead, but not by police.

Jaras said that by Sunday evening, Mousavi's supporters in Tehran were marching towards the hospital where his nephew's body was being kept.

Shots were heard in northern Tehran after nightfall.

Jaras said unrest spread to other parts of Iran, including the holy city of Qom. Clashes erupted in the cities of Shiraz, Isfahan, Najafabad, Mashhad and Babol, it said, in reports that could not be independently verified.

...'We will kill those who killed our brothers,' Jaras quoted demonstrators as chanting."

The state-controlled media in Iran are kept on a short leash, so don't expect to get the real story from IRNA or Fars.

(Photo by Majid/Getty Images)

Abdel Kareem Nabil Soliman, a 24-year-old Egyptian student, blogged under the name "Kareem Amer" starting in 2004. He captured authorities' attention the next year. Soliman denounced attacks he witnessed by Muslims on Coptic Christian establishments and panned extremist views taught at Al-Azhar University in Cairo -- and risked his life in the process. Things only got worse for Soliman.

"It causes us to cry, be grieved, and be struck with frustration to find ourselves threatened with death," he wrote on May 7, 2006, after escaping 20 fellow students wielding knives, leather belts and sticks who had surrounded his taxi outside the university. "Not because we kill. Not because we loot others' property. Not because we transgress the limits of our freedom. But because we think!" In February 2007, Soliman was sentenced to three years in prison for "insulting Islam" and one year for insulting President Hosni Mubarak. "I shall not recant, not even by an inch, from any word I have written," read Soliman's last blog post before his Nov. 6, 2006, arrest, when authorities were closing in. "These restrictions will not preclude my dream of obtaining my freedom."

Of his goals, he wrotes on his blog, "I am down to earth Law student; I look forward to help humanity against all form of discriminations... I am looking forward to open up my own human rights activists Law firm, which will include other lawyers who share the same views. Our main goal is to defend the rights of Muslim and Arabic women against all form of discrimination and to stop violent crimes committed on a daily basis in these countries."

And so he sits in a prison, disowned by the father who said his son should be executed under sharia law if he did not repent. Egypt has turned a deaf ear to the growing global chorus demanding his freedom.

Now Soliman's final appeal has been rejected, and he's ineligible for release until November 2010. To learn more about the campaign to free this blogger and to help out, visit the Free Kareem website.

First, the basics: 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Friday, but was overcome by quick-thinking passengers who restrained him and put out the flames. Abdulmutallab, who suffered second- and third-degree burns, was charged yesterday with trying to bring down the aircraft.

The well-to-do Nigerian was no stranger to authorities, either, as he appeared on a list of those with suspected ties to terrorism -- a list numbering half a million people or so -- that is shared between countries. But he wasn't on a watch list that prevented him from flying or subjected him to additional rigorous screening procedures, despite his father, a prominent Nigerian banker, going to the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, in November to warn authorities about his son's increasingly radical Islamic views. Abdulmutallab, who had studied in London from September 2005 to June 2008, left school to travel, including to Yemen, and had been turned away from trying to re-enter Britain earlier this year on a student visa for a school that didn't exist.

And here's what we know:

Abdulmutallab reportedly claimed that he was operating under al-Qaida instructions to detonate the plane over U.S. soil. The fact that he'd gone to Yemen, as he claims, would reinforce this, considering the country being an al-Qaida stronghold and the staging ground for attacks such as the USS Cole, as well as many in private industry being steady financing source for the terrorist group.

The plastic explosive, which obviously clears airport metal detectors, is PETN, which was the same that al-Qaeda operative "shoe bomber" Richard Reid used in his soles when he tried to blow up American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami in 2001. In fact, Abdulmuttalab reportedly tried to use 80 grams of PETN to Reid's 50 grams, more than enough to blow a hole in the plane. (The New York Post has more on the "crotch bomb" sewed into Abdulmuttalab's underwear.)

Amsterdam, Abdulmuttalab's point of origin, is no stranger to Islamic radicalism. The Netherlands, after all, is the country where Muslim immigration has been a clashing point, where filmmaker Theo van Gogh was slain for making a film deemed insulting to Islam, where MP Geert Wilders made the film "Fitna." Though it's unclear at this point if Abdulmuttalab simply flew through here on his way from Lagos or made contact with others at this point.

This incident does continue the recent news trend of family members alerting authorities about radicalization of their kin, which is refreshing to see.

(Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)